Sweet as Honey, Cruel as Steel

No one knows the story of my waiting; the reason being, I don't tell it. What's the use of explaining? Can everything really be conveyed through 'texts'! Truly!! Whatever the case, I won't be able to make you understand. I can only throw out this certainty: many of you don't know how to wait the way I do, or rather, such fortune plus misfortune hasn't befallen many of you.

From all this waiting, I don't even feel like crying anymore. Yet I'm the very person who used to cry through entire nights, turning them into dawn. No resentment comes. I think, let it be, why unnecessarily...! I make no complaints. Just as one quietly eats boiled potatoes and hot rice, I'm quietly passing through life as well. When I see people getting restless, impatient, I say to myself, "Be still, this is nothing at all." Of course, it's better to say these things only to myself. Otherwise I'd have to hear... "You'd understand what it's like if it happened to your own life!" I don't want to hear that. If I did, I'd just burst out laughing!

Come on, tell me what hasn't happened? What hasn't been done to me! You don't know. No one knows. Do you think I became this calm, like a river flowing steady and still, in a single day? No way, brother. Life isn't that simple! At least it wasn't for me. You know that song lyric? "Jeene ke liye socha hai nahin, dard samhalne honge, muskuraye to, muskurane ke karz utarne honge." (Never thought that to live, one would have to bear such pain. Even if I smile, I'll have to pay the debt of that smile.) These two lines of the song are now the essence of my life. I don't have the strength to ask how much more pain I'll have to endure. I don't dare to laugh freely for fear of accumulating debt.

I had heard that waiting was supposed to be sweet like honey. That even honey could be so ruthless—I never could have understood without tasting this honey myself.

Waiting through the night until dawn broke, I would tell myself, let night come. Waiting through the night until night fell, I would tell myself, "A little longer, let's see, just until tomorrow morning." That little longer, that night, that morning—none of it came to me.

Was I born only to wait? O God, give me death, but don't give me any more waiting.